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I saw these very cute wooden Nativities and just had to make them for a dinner we were having.

You will need 2 pieces of 2X2. one needs to be about 10 inches and the other about 8 inches tall. Paint the wood your preference of colors. I choose to do some with “Joseph” brown and some green, and “Mary” blue. We then sanded them down and applied stain over the top to mute the colors a bit. Place a painted knob (I got them at JoAnns) on top for their heads. A scrap rectangular piece of any kind of flat board, (ply wood or any flat board wood) sized 3 inches by 2 inches, painted a cream color, sanded and stained again as well. A button, painted skin tone completes the baby Jesus. Glue him to the other two. We then wound twine around the three and tied it off.

We made quite a few of these and they were a big hit at our Christ centered celebration!

When I was thinking about quiet book page ideas, I found the “Imagine our Life” website. She is an amazing designer. She has a great page for cooking cupcakes. So, rather than reinvent the wheel, I decided to use it. The only problem was I had allotted myself only one page per ancestor for this quiet book, so I made a couple of quick modifications to turn her beautiful two page quiet book page into a single page.

I like that it is a page that can have pretend play. They can read the recipe book, add ingredients and stir, bake in the oven, and then decorate the cupcakes. This has potential for a lot of play time.

Since she does such a great job of giving instructions as well as a beautiful patten, I recommend you visit her blog and use her pattern as well. It is great!

First, we cut the pizza in half to show how to divide into equal parts. Then, We used the food on top to teach the concept. We started by putting food of one type on one side of the pizza and the other kind of food on the other half. Each of them took turns so they could all grasp the concept. Finally, I gave them a pile, and we divided it in half by keeping one piece, and then giving the second piece to someone else. They had a lot of fun with this activity, and left with a strong grasp of the concept of half.

Since it is the holiday season, I thought I would share a fun effect I created specifically for Christmas photos. I had a couple of pictures of my daughter with Santa last year, but I wanted to display one in our home that looked like a drawing. So, I played around in Photoshop a little bit until I found something I liked. Would you like to do something like this as well? Follow these Simple Steps:

1. Open up your photograph.

2. Change the image to Black and White with a good contrast in the photo. I do this by clicking control U and then moving the saturation to nothing. If you need to change the contrast, click on Control L and play around with the levels.

3. Click on the Filter menu, Go down to “Sharpen” and then over to “Unsharp Mask”.

I played withe all the settings for a while, but ended up with the following:

Amount 187%
Radius 2.6 pixels
Threshold 46 levels

Have fun! This works with all kinds of pictures, but Christmas ones with Santa are my favorite.

Here is another fun neighbor gift idea. We wanted to give our neighbors something fun to do together. I wrote the following poem to go with some UNO cards.

UNO Dasher, and Dancer and Prancer and Vixon. Comet, and Cupid
and Donder, and Blitzen…but do you recall, the real reason for the season
after all? We are grateful at this time of year to reflect on the birth of our Lord and Savior and the blessings we receive because of his birth into this imperfect world. UNO we love and appreciate your great friendship and UNO we wish you a Merry
Christmas and Joy and happiness in the coming year. We hope You will use this to find joy together as a family, and take some time away from the busyness of life,
because UNO you deserve it!

Fun idea! Just attach the poem to the cards and Merry Christmas!

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The yearly neighbor gifts are so fun. But, sometimes I stress about what to do. I always want something nice, but creative as well. We wanted to share some fun, very simple (it has to be simple this time of year, right?!) and creative things for you to give to your neighbors.

Everyone loves candles. Glade candles are always on some kind of sale. I love getting Glade products and adding a cute saying, such as “At this time of year, we wanted to let you know that we are so GLADE for your friendship, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

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I made these cute, simple mangers for some decoration at a dinner that we had. They were so simple, and only took about 10 minutes to put together, which means you could probably make them with kids, with a little adult supervision and help with the hot glue.

What you will need:

A 2×4 cut about an inch and a half at a slant

raffia

small piece of white cloth

small wooden button

Hot glue your raffia (or straw) to the wood so that it looks like a hay bed. Fold the cloth so that it looks like a baby bundle and end with the raw edges underneath where they can be glued to the straw. Add a wooden button for the face, and if wanted draw a face, or eyes on the button. Done! So simple, but very cute as a baby Jesus decoration!

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I wanted to teach the kids a little about architecture while we were learning about Italy. I thought about doing something with columns and teaching them about the basic types of columns. I thought about other Roman ruins I could show them. I thought about some of the great cathedrals and basilicas in Italy. But, when push came to shove I went the easy route. I found this castle on sale at a store and ran with it. We set it up and I let the kids have some imaginary play time. They pretended to be royalty, dragons, and peasants. Then they used crayons to color the castle. This was such a hit that they could have spent hours playing with it. But, I think a simple cardboard box would have worked just as well for them.